The electronic hum inside Peabody Auditorium, which has come to be a common distraction during concerts there, was louder than usual when the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performed here Wednesday night.Rather than intrude on just the quietest bits - say, a hushed solo from a single instrument - the noise droned in on top of even moderately gentle playing from the full orchestra. Many an atmospheric pianissimo in Jan Sibelius' En Saga got spoiled that way, as did many a cozy lyrical spot in Antonin Dvorak's Eighth Symphony.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra showed that it belongs among the world's elite ensembles with an imposing performance Sunday afternoon in the Festival of Orchestras series at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre. Music Director Robert Spano led his orchestra through a nicely varied program that demonstrated the impressive abilities of these musicians with pieces from the 18th through the 21st centuries, any of which could have been the afternoon's featured work. Spano has a reputation for supporting new music, so it was no surprise that he opened the program with Rainbow Body, a prize-winning piece by Christopher Theofanidis that Spano premiered in 2000 with the Houston Symphony.

It probably should come as no surprise that Yoel Levi and his Atlanta Symphony handle these famous Mendelssohn pieces with such verve. True, in most of their recordings together, Levi and his players have favored the big, powerful scores of the late 19th and early 20th centuries - Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, for instance. But Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, for instance, has shown that Levi and his players also have a flair for the lighter neoclassical mode. And the virtuosity and refinement that serve so well there do the same in Mendelssohn.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's visit to Carr Performing Arts Centre was one of those concerts that gives precision and discipline a good name.It wasn't simply a matter of playing the notes clearly and accurately - though the orchestra did so in spades, even in the rowdiest parts of Hector Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony. Conductor Yoel Levi and his group used the clarity as a means for filling the music on Sunday's program with life, expressiveness and excitement.And that's the purpose of the whole exercise, isn't it?

The Orlando Celebrity Concert Association will present flutist James Galway and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in concert next March, substituting for the originally scheduled appearance of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.The Atlanta Symphony, booked to appear on OCCA's series next March 21, canceled the entire tour planned for spring 1993, OCCA president Clark Watters said. As a replacement, OCCA has lined up Galway and the Jacksonville Symphony - which will be led by its music director, Roger Nierenberg - to come to Carr Performing Arts Centre at 8 p.m. March 29.OCCA's other two programs for 1992-93 will be a concert by the guitar quartet Los Romeros on Oct. 11 and a recital by pianist Alexei Sultanov on Jan. 24, 1993.

Conductor HENRY SOPKIN, 84, who started with 100 high school musicians and gradually created the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, died Tuesday. Sopkin was hired in 1944 to direct the Atlanta Youth Symphony Orchestra. With a budget of $5,000, he developed the youth symphony into an adult professional organization with a $300,000 budget by 1966. He retired that year as the symphony's musical director, having overseen more than 1,000 performances and artists including Jascha Heifetz and Benny Goodman.

The return of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to the Orlando area will cap the Orlando Celebrity Concert Association's three-concert 1992-93 season.The Atlanta Symphony's Orlando appearance on March 21, 1993, will be its first since conductor Yoel Levi took over the orchestra's leadership from its longtime music director, Robert Shaw. The soloist for the concert will be Soviet emigre violinist Dmitri Sitkovetsky, son of the well-known pianist Bella Davidovich.A pianist still resident in the former Soviet Union, Alexei Sultanov, will give a solo recital on Jan. 24, 1993.

The Florida Symphony Orchestra will spice up the waning days of the musical season with a one-day Contemporary Music Festival to be held Thursday at the University of Central Florida.FSO music director Kenneth Jean and resident conductor Michael Krajewski, along with well-known American composer Stephen Paulus, have selected scores by three Americans to be featured in the festival. From James Lewis, a faculty member at the University of South Florida, comes The Errant Note to Seize; New York-based Matthew Harris has contributed Ancient Greek Melodies; and Bern Herbolsheimer, who teaches at the University of Washington, will be represented by his Symphony No. 1.The FSO, led by Krajewski, will play them first in a 2 p.m. open rehearsal at UCF's Student Activities Center, then in a 7 p.m. concert at the same location.

The Shostakovich Fifth, with its torments and mockery, demands a potent orchestra, and the Atlanta Symphony certainly is that. Here, its hefty sound and agile playing are allied in one forceful gesture after another: the strings' lithe but imperious attack on the beginning, the glaring outbursts of derision in the second movement, the menacing tread of the finale's opening.But stillness is as much a part of the Fifth as all that is, and Levi makes the introspections just as striking. In the way he throws a veil over a phrase, molds a melody or lets a cadence die away, Levi gives the music a delicacy of feeling many conductors miss.

What will it be? Men's volleyball and Willie Nelson? Women's gymnastics and the premiere of Alfred Uhry's new play? How about the pole vault and the Pilobolus Dance Theater? Or maybe fencing and the Atlanta Symphony?More than 1 million tickets to the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival in Atlanta are now on sale.The multi-disciplinary arts festival produced by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games Cultural Olympiad (ACOG) will feature more than 200 performances and 25 exhibits before and during the summer games.

What will it be? Men's volleyball and Willie Nelson? Women's gymnastics and the premiere of Alfred Uhry's new play? How about the pole vault and the Pilobolus Dance Theater? Or maybe fencing and the Atlanta Symphony?More than 1 million tickets to the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival in Atlanta are now on sale.The multi-disciplinary arts festival produced by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games Cultural Olympiad (ACOG) will feature more than 200 performances and 25 exhibits before and during the summer games.

It probably should come as no surprise that Yoel Levi and his Atlanta Symphony handle these famous Mendelssohn pieces with such verve. True, in most of their recordings together, Levi and his players have favored the big, powerful scores of the late 19th and early 20th centuries - Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, for instance. But Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, for instance, has shown that Levi and his players also have a flair for the lighter neoclassical mode. And the virtuosity and refinement that serve so well there do the same in Mendelssohn.

The Orlando Celebrity Concert Association will present flutist James Galway and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in concert next March, substituting for the originally scheduled appearance of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.The Atlanta Symphony, booked to appear on OCCA's series next March 21, canceled the entire tour planned for spring 1993, OCCA president Clark Watters said. As a replacement, OCCA has lined up Galway and the Jacksonville Symphony - which will be led by its music director, Roger Nierenberg - to come to Carr Performing Arts Centre at 8 p.m. March 29.OCCA's other two programs for 1992-93 will be a concert by the guitar quartet Los Romeros on Oct. 11 and a recital by pianist Alexei Sultanov on Jan. 24, 1993.

The return of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to the Orlando area will cap the Orlando Celebrity Concert Association's three-concert 1992-93 season.The Atlanta Symphony's Orlando appearance on March 21, 1993, will be its first since conductor Yoel Levi took over the orchestra's leadership from its longtime music director, Robert Shaw. The soloist for the concert will be Soviet emigre violinist Dmitri Sitkovetsky, son of the well-known pianist Bella Davidovich.A pianist still resident in the former Soviet Union, Alexei Sultanov, will give a solo recital on Jan. 24, 1993.

The electronic hum inside Peabody Auditorium, which has come to be a common distraction during concerts there, was louder than usual when the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performed here Wednesday night.Rather than intrude on just the quietest bits - say, a hushed solo from a single instrument - the noise droned in on top of even moderately gentle playing from the full orchestra. Many an atmospheric pianissimo in Jan Sibelius' En Saga got spoiled that way, as did many a cozy lyrical spot in Antonin Dvorak's Eighth Symphony.

The leaders of the Orlando Opera Company decided last week to go ahead with the company's May trip to France, which the group had only recently decided to postpone until next year.The Orlando Opera will present its upcoming production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado in Toulon, France, May 10-12, said general director Robert Swedberg. Plans for the trip were originally made more than a year ago as part of a cultural-exchange agreement between the Orlando Opera and the Opera de Toulon.

**** Jan Sibelius, Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5Performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Yoel Levi conductingTelarc CD-80246Sibelius' music isn't easy to bring off. It has grandly dramatic gestures that demand huge masses of sound. It has ardent melodies that fall flat unless they're done with rich tone and a sure sense of pace and climax. It has delicate spots that have to be sketched in gracefully, but make no impact unless they have substance and intensity at the same time.That's a tough list of demands, but it's largely met here.

**** Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 10Performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Yoel Levi conductingTelarc CD-80241Shostakovich's 10th Symphony is serious, but it isn't grim. There's a big difference.Shostakovich wrote the 10th in 1953, soon after the death of longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Could it be that Stalin's demise left Shostakovich - a sometime victim of Stalin's antagonism - feeling a bit hopeful about the future?We have it from Shostakovich himself that he intended the second movement - a driving, hard-bitten allegro - as a musical portrait of the Soviet tyrant.

**** Jan Sibelius, Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5Performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Yoel Levi conductingTelarc CD-80246Sibelius' music isn't easy to bring off. It has grandly dramatic gestures that demand huge masses of sound. It has ardent melodies that fall flat unless they're done with rich tone and a sure sense of pace and climax. It has delicate spots that have to be sketched in gracefully, but make no impact unless they have substance and intensity at the same time.That's a tough list of demands, but it's largely met here.

**** Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 10Performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Yoel Levi conductingTelarc CD-80241Shostakovich's 10th Symphony is serious, but it isn't grim. There's a big difference.Shostakovich wrote the 10th in 1953, soon after the death of longtime Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Could it be that Stalin's demise left Shostakovich - a sometime victim of Stalin's antagonism - feeling a bit hopeful about the future?We have it from Shostakovich himself that he intended the second movement - a driving, hard-bitten allegro - as a musical portrait of the Soviet tyrant.